


Itty Bitty Pieces

by gongjins



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, PTSD, Pining, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-War, Torture, War Themes, World War II, canonical character trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 16:19:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4026640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gongjins/pseuds/gongjins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes Bucky twenty-six plus some seventy-odd years to put himself somewhat together enough to say what he needs to say to Steve. And they say you only get one chance at this sort of thing. A character exploration story about Bucky, spanning from Pre-war to post-CATWS. All the usual Winter Soldier warnings apply.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Itty Bitty Pieces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [machinesway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/machinesway/gifts).



> So, I tried to make things with the war accurate where I could, but ended up spinning a bit of the comics in for some places they went. And because the 107th Infantry didn't actually exist during WWII, I also made some stuff up. I hope it isnt too far off base, though.

The thing is, it takes Bucky twenty-six years to figure out a few very basic bits of himself, just to get it pulled out of him and put back in all wrong. It’s him, though. Part of him and a piece of him and it’s just living with it every day, that’s the easy part. Dying with it -- that’s when it gets hard. Barnes’s fight for what they believe in, and they need something to protect. His dad told him that. It makes you a man, makes you good. If Bucky forgets himself at least, at least he’s always had that kid from Brooklyn who never backed away from a fight. 

This is that story, more or less. 

Bucky Barnes checks out of high school after two years, just long enough to get the good stuff. You see, he met this punk ass kid getting beat up in an alleyway behind the building when he’s in seventh grade and ever since then, his life’s been a bit off kilter. He thinks the smidge of a boy has to be about ten at first, which makes his blood boil. It takes a quick one two of his left hook and he gets backhanded across the face by a bully with a pug nose and a broken tooth. There’s something to be said at the way the little kid - aw, hell no it’s little Steven Rogers from his damn class - looks at him with a feral look in the eye. 

“I could have taken them,” he says with a snarl like a cornered dog with a voice already changing and cracking from puberty in a way that doesn’t really stick to the rest of him. He heaves himself to his feet like he doesn’t quite know what it is to lie down, like the death rattle coming out of his mouth is nothing. 

Bucky shrugs long arms and smirks at him, says nothing about the blood Steve wipes blood on his shirtsleeve. Doesn’t realize how the words sink right in and how those baby bright blues pierce right through him. This is what his Dad meant, is all he can think, when he said you gotta find something to protect. 

“Sure you could.” He sticks a hand out with a smirk. “Just getting a thrill. Bucky Barnes.”

“I know, you’re in my class. Steve Rogers,” Steve says with a grin, taking his hand anyway. “Wanna come over?” 

Bucky’s still dazzled by that smile. He knows he’s going down then, something wrenching itself deep in his gut. “Sure.” 

He stays at the Rogers’ place too long and watches Mrs. Rogers put out the stops with dinner. He knows this has to be Steve’s way of thanking him for what he can’t quite say and he knows a big meal in a poor household when he sees one. The food is amazing, but he takes less than Steve and acts like he’s full when he slides the rest onto his plate. 

He sees the books in the apartment, all battered and worn and read too much. He sees threadbare clothes on each of them, none that fit quite right. The couch is moth ridden underneath a knit coverlet. Mrs. Rogers is a nurse and the pay is good but she’s just one fine woman raising a sick punk kid like Steve and the ache starts here, at the dinner table. Both of their eyes turn to blue crescent moons when they smile, and Bucky will always swear his heart really starts beating here. 

There’s nothing more school can teach him that his Ma’s strong back hasn’t taught him anyway, and he doesn’t need all that fancy math when there’s good work to be found down at the shipyard or the docks. If he hurries he can put his hands to good use, and maybe he can help Mrs. Rogers with her bills.

Bucky grows up scrounging a bit like everybody else but not quite as much as Steve. With his terrible cough and his good strong Irish Ma who came over away from war for a life much better than scrapping for everything. So if Bucky puts one warm hand at his back and one tucked over his heart to feel the rattle and feel for the heartbeat, if he starts putting them before himself and feeding them with all he’s got, well, his Ma always did say, you know?

Years pass like that, Bucky spending nights over at the Rogers half the time, invading their space so he can hang out with Steve and make sure he doesn’t have a coughing fit or get beat up too much. He’s respectful like any good Brooklyn boy oughta’ be, with his ma’ams and helpful hands, until Mrs. Rogers swats at him and tells him to stay for dinner, tells him to call her Sarah. 

“Drop the funny business already, Bucky Barnes. You’re family.” He meets her eye with a playful smirk, lazy and all new swagger recently developed, and bumps her gently in the shoulder while he’s helping her with the dishes. 

“Aw, Missus Sarah, I didn’t even bring a ring!” He’s taller than her just barely, and she laughs when it sends her off a step, but he doesn’t mention the way it takes her a moment too long to steady herself.

\--

There’s days he stays too late after the docks when Steve teaches him the important bits of what they learned in school (never enough, but Bucky’s going to be damned if Steve ever drops out if he ever thought of it). When fall hits, he packs a bag and parks it on their couch. He’s heard Steve’s cough get worse and there’s a million things wrong with Steven Grant fucking Rogers, but if someone isn’t here to keep him from getting up he’s going to keel over permanently. 

“Come on, Bucky, I’m fine,” Steve says, curled in on himself from the effort to get the words out. 

There’s iron in the clench of his jaw and stuff stronger than that in his eyes. He knows that look by now though, the one trying to bluff the pain and shame away. The effect is ruined when Steve’s little body convulses with coughing, and Bucky is at his side before he knows what he’s doing and praying to God that his hands don’t come away red. When they don’t he says his Hail Mary’s in his head. His hand is warm against Steve’s clammy neck. He lingers a moment too long and only gets up to heat water for Steve and give him some tea he took from his home. 

“Yeah,” Bucky grins as he goes. “I know you are pal, I’m here for my best girl.” 

Steve’s expression takes a comical twist that leaves Bucky giddy, and he slots into the house like he was born into it for the rest of the evening. It’s night that gets him up and out when Sarah isn’t home yet, working the night shift, and Steve hacks at the nighttime chill. He’s afraid every rattle will be the last one until he stops rattling. Bucky’s off the couch and at his bedside, stockings full of holes and soles of his feet shocked from the cold. He brings his blanket and wraps both it and himself around Steve, turns his back to him so that he can be a warm furnace but not be too invasive, but needs the contact to keep a handle on his breathing. 

Steve breathes a little better on his side. Bucky wakes up before him since Steve’s exhausted from coughing all night, and finds he’s twisted back around in his sleep. One hand is curled between their chests and palm pressed warm to measure the rise and fall of Steve’s chest. He listens to the wheezing breaths, the slight snore that he can’t quite help. His other arm -- that one’s wrapped around that bony waist, and he flushes when he pulls away, swallowing hard.

It’s a long time ‘til spring though, so if Bucky doesn’t start his dancing streak here with extra money he’s saved to take girls on dates - well - he’s not overcompensating, he’s just looking for dancing partners. Besides, the girls talk and rate boys, so the higher he rates to the girls in town the better the chances he’ll have of getting double dates to take Steve out with him. Steve deserves fun too, and Bucky likes dragging him along. It isn’t because he’s the odd man out, or because he usually gets left with both girls. But he likes seeing Steve’s ears go red and likes to see him out on the town. He needs to find a good strong girl for him, like his Ma’. It’s good fun, but it’s also more than that, as far as a matchmaking game goes. 

He comes home with sweat dry on the back of his neck and lipstick on his collar if he was good. He helps Sarah with dinner, then with the washing up, because Steve’s usually bedridden by the time he gets home from after school hours.

A winter and a half later and Steve’s art gets noticed by the right people. He gets a little bit of a scholarship but needs a whole lot more money for it. Bucky works at their friend Skip’s auto shop this time, repairing engines and greasing gears. He stays for a few extra customers and gets a whole five dollars for his trouble from some rich schmuck who broke down taking a detour. Bucky pulls it out with a smirk when he comes through the door to the Rogers’ home and shoves it down the back of Steve’s collar.

“Bucky!” When Steve Rogers tries to push the back on him, Bucky shoves it in his hands with a wink. 

“C’mon Stevie, luck of the Irish - green’s your color.” He gives him a soft pinch when he drops down next to him on his good side. 

Steve glares at him and if Bucky were a weaker man he might give in. But he knows Steve, knows his tells and knows he also needs the money. He also knows when to drop his smirk and when to turn on the couch so his socked feet end up half buried under Steve’s thigh. 

“I can’t take this, Buck.” Steve says quietly, eyes hard and mouth stiff. 

Bucky leans forward, wrapping one arm around his own knees so he can grab Steve’s bony shoulder. “Sure you can, I want you to take it. Use it for supplies or art school, whatever you need it for. It’s just five dollars Stevie, and I can get more of those if these rich bastards keep getting lost by the shop.” 

Steve snorts, but smooths out the bill of creases and puts it in his wallet anyway. It’s not the end of it, because no matter how much Bucky tries it never really is - there’s always something else and Steve always gets out of letting people help him when he can. 

“If you give it back to me Stevie, I’m going to take Hannah out, and that’d be a shame.”

“Hannah’s a nice girl,” Steve says with a snort and a smile, leaning back to glare. “You went out with her before.”

“And my toes still regret it,” Bucky says with a wry grin. He wiggles his toes under Steve’s thigh just to hear him squawk. “Be a pal, Stevie. Save my toes.” 

Some nights they don’t stay at the Steve’s. Sometimes it’s because Sarah’s working late and sometimes it’s because his own are and somebody’s gotta be home with the girls. Bucky drags Steve over to watch on him and stuff him full of Ma’s pie. 

“I’m good, Buck,” Steve says laughing, and Bucky rolls his shoulders, smirks his smirk. Clasps him where his thumb fits into the hollow of his collarbone. 

“You don’t gotta’ be, pal. We’re family.” 

Then Becca snorts into her book from her spot on the couch. He tosses his coat on her when he shucks it off, too much swagger and too much heart beating in the hollow of his chest. She sticks her tongue out at him but grins at Steve, waves at him from under her book. 

“Hiya Steve,” she says. and if his smile turns more genuine when Steve sighs and drops down next to her on the couch, he doesn’t mention it. He’s proud of his sister for looking at Steve like a person the way most girls won’t.

Now his Dad’s told him a lot of things over the years, while their family does alright with both parents’ factory work and Bucky’s. His Ma’s told him a lot of budgeting tips. And from a young age at the Barnes’ family, after Bucky realized he was going to be spending a hell of a lot of time with the Rogers’, he started stepping into the kitchen with his Ma’ and flicking a knife nervously between his fingers like a tick. He learns how to cook the way his mother did, and learns how to swear like her too, the way they never say a lady can talk in the pictures. 

She didn’t teach him how to dance though, that he was born with. Music and dance halls are the most fun he’s ever had and dragging Steve out on double dates to show him how fun it is -- it’s all he wants to do. But Steve’s got two left feet and no girl ever wants to dance with him. He wants to take Steve to Broadway sometime, just to dance without turning heads. 

His parents taught him a lot about what it is to be cared for and what it means to care for somebody else. He’s grown up protecting somebody or another, born for it. “It’s a Barnes trait, son,” George says, looking over the top of his newspaper with his cap crooked with a wink. It’s after a long ass night of Bucky not sleeping when Steve’s cough took a turn for the worse. “You’re always going to give to keep what you’ve got.”

Bucky sits back, hollowed out eyes and a smirk with lips too red on a pale, blotchy face. “Fuck, Da,” he spits with a laugh. “I ain’t givin’ a damn thing.” 

That’s just it, because for all that Bucky Barnes has worked his ass off for Steve Grant fucking Rogers, he’s not the one giving, he’s taking; one bright ass smile at a time. Taking a meaning for his own life, if that’s what it comes right down to (and it always does). He doesn’t help Steve out because he thinks Steve needs to be protected - no. It’s never been about Steve being weak. It’s about being around the stubborn punk, about fighting dirty and finishing the fights so Steve doesn’t have to. Steve’s got bright blue eyes and a heart that beats so strong in a body too weak for his soul. He doesn’t need it tainted by the hard, rough truth. Things are good, just like this. Economy be damned to hell. 

So of course, when he thinks things are going okay, when he’s starting to be optimistic about this city and thinks he’s beginning to see a few less shacks -- of course that’s when the city starts taking things he loves away. First, Bucky’s dad passes, then Bucky has to move back home. 

“We can get by on our own,” Steve says, smiling a thin smile and clasping him at the nape of his neck with those big hands just a touch too cold. Like his heart can’t fill them fast enough. 

And sure they can, sure. Bucky knows that -- it’s never been about that. It’s the damned family genes, aren’t they? “I won’t have you in a shack Stevie, I won’t. I’ll come by to see my best girl.” He says with a twinkle in his eye. He doesn’t say You won’t survive a shack but he can see the shadow of it when Steve looks down the alleyway. 

“They’re doing good things in the Government these days,” Steve says, because he knows Bucky’s been let go at the docks again. “And mom’s always got work.” 

“Yeah?” Bucky asked, eyebrow raising. “That’s what they always say.”

“Besides, isn’t your best girl Donna now?” Steve asks, smiling and bumping shoulders with him. Bucky laughs, because yeah they went out a few times and Donna’s a sweet girl but Stevie has to know it’s not about love, the dates. They’re fun and he loves dancing, he likes the girls, he loves to dote on girls and give them a good time. But he’s never going to go too far with any of them. He’s got a reputation and so do they. 

He doesn’t say anything when Mrs. Rogers starts working the TB ward, but it’s when she starts deteriorating, when her cough gets worse than Steve’s ever was and her face two shades paler, that’s when his heart starts hammering. He doesn’t want to lose either of them but he really doesn’t want to lose both of them. 

He tries to visit her once, but she’s already too far gone they say, isn’t going to have much time left. A TB ward is no place for anyone healthy who’s not practiced in medicine. He wants to say he’s been taking care of her since he was fifteen, but that’s a lie, of course. Nobody ‘took care of’ Sarah Rogers. 

“To the best girl I ever knew,” Bucky says three days after he’s left Steve alone at his house after the funeral. He managed to last three whole days before he dragged him back out, pulling him from home and from his art and the dust settling across her things and the hard to reach places she kept so spotless. The places that give Steve a hard time with his asthma. He pours one out for Sarah Rogers, and Steve doesn’t hesitate to follow through, just the once. 

“Bucky,” Steve slurs a few drinks later - drinks that Bucky paid for whenever he wasn’t looking. “Bucky, why?” 

And he looks into those eyes too bright in that pale face, with the red lids and the smattering of freckles that stand out against pale bones. Steve’s never looked smaller, never looked lost. He swallows hard, remembering the time Miss Rogers said Steve would’ve been taller than both of them, had his lungs been healthy. Her voice shakes free of his mind because Steve’s warm and pressed against him, eyes so wide that he might as well get lost in the eternity echoed in those pupils. He looks like he’s searching past Bucky, somewhere and someone far away. 

Bucky wraps an arm around him, holds him close enough to smell the handmade soap from the Rogers’ washroom. “God, Steve, I don’t know.” 

He wraps him up and sees him home. Steve takes the steps ahead of him and gets halfway up before he turns. Bucky freezes when Steve’s gaze catches him at eye level. 

“Steve?” He starts, tentatively urging, and Steve crashes into him. One big, clammy hand on the back of his neck, one thumb under his chin and framing his cheek. His mouth is clumsy when it presses to his own, lips cold against the warmth of his. His stomach wrenches and he forgets how to breathe. His mind stutters and stops -- his mouth drops open and Steve pushes his tongue into his mouth. A tingling sensation is doing the foxtrot down his spine and filling his guts with warmth. 

Then he remembers that right above their heads is the Robinson’s kitchen window and across from them is an entire complex of snoops, and he pulls back with a start and a rush of air. Steve’s eyes are wide, his cheeks flushed and nose pink and both of them stare at one another in disbelief, or maybe shock. 

“So, anyway, I’ll see you?” Bucky clears his throat, pulls back, runs his hands through his hair. He stays long enough to see Steve nod before he’s turning on a dime and rocketing down the rickety steps towards home with his mind screaming at him.

 

\--

He spends a solid week home, driving the house crazy, and that’s when his Ma snaps and says “James Buchanan Barnes, your sisters and I haul in more than enough to pay for this house and keep us clothed. You’ve got one hour to get to Steve’s house and get him to agree to room with you or you’ll be living in a shack.”

“C’mon Stevie,” he says from the couch when Steve comes home. He let himself in (‘cause Steve’ll never move the key under the stone), and he’s already cooked, cleaned, and would work on laundry but there’s no soap for scrubbing.

Steve’s brow furrows, he opens his mouth to complain. But he’s also got a busted lip and a torn jacket. His shirt’s rumpled at the collar like someone grabbed him there, and Bucky sighs. “You’re doing a great job on your own, punk.” 

“Yeah, I was.” Steve says, jutting out his chin and dropping his jacket onto the table. He fumbles for the sewing kit with cold fingers, and starts unlacing his boots with a sigh. “But I guess if your Ma really kicked you out.”

“She did, she did. You know what she’s like.”

Steve looks up, eyebrow raised. “I know what you’re like.” 

Bucky has the decency to blush, but covers it up with a curl of his lip. “So, we split the rent, the food, share the meals, I’ll take the couch--”

“Share the bed.” Steve interrupts, deep voice abrupt when it interrupts him. “I mean, I’ve been putting word out for Mom’s room to be used for borders needing a place to rest, so, we can share my room.”

Bucky’s heart hammers fast - he licks his lips and opens his mouth. “Stevie,” he starts to protest but can’t quite make it work. It’ll help, it does help. It’ll make sure someone’s there to make sure Steve’s alright when he’s not working. “Alright, but their money goes towards your half of the rent.” 

He’s half relieved, half disappointed they don’t talk about the night on the steps. Maybe Steve was too drunk to realize, maybe Bucky’s reading too much into it. He’d worked himself out and now the energy’s there and the feeling’s there but there’s no resolution and he’s not going to bring it up. 

When winter strikes, Bucky’s glad for the extra warmth at night. The problem is -- it’s always a problem, isn’t it -- the problem is how he feels waking up next to Steve. Feeling whole and warm and safe and too many times a bit too much so -- he’s got a problem, he knows it. He’s surprised Steve hasn’t guessed it. But Steve’s also deaf in one ear and probably can’t see the way Bucky’s cheeks heat up with his colors wonky as they are. As much as Bucky hates how sick Steve is he’s glad it practically keeps his secret for him. 

Going out dancing, that helps too. Bucky doesn’t think of himself as a real intuitive guy, he prefers the straightforward thing. He likes girls alright, but he’s never minded looking at fellas either. He’s never been with a guy the way he was with Marcy, the girl who wanted to go all the way with him (and who was he to decline, when she had him wrapped around her finger). He took care of his girls, and guys weren’t really necessary. The only guy who’d ever been was Stevie, but he wasn’t his and he’d never try to claim him, anyway. 

It turns out it doesn’t matter much come ‘41.

He’s working the shipyard again when Pearl Harbor gets hit. Pearl Harbor gets hit and every radio in Brooklyn is turned to Roosevelt’s speech and then it’s war. War, and Bucky fumbles the cast iron in his hands and nearly loses a toe. 

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky says, heart hammering as he hears what’s been done. It isn’t that they didn’t know about the war effort in Europe or the Japanese Empire growing in the east, but it didn’t seem like the thing to touch the USA, save the work it got them. But damn, damn if he doesn’t lie awake at night thinking of the medals in his father’s chest back home from the Great War, if he’s not thinking of when his Dad would stay up all night or spent it shivering in bed next to their Ma’. 

“Jimmy says his Da’ went to war for glory,” Bucky’d said one night after supper, sprawled out on the floor with Becca. “Is that why you went, Da’?”

His dad sighed, putting down his book and laying his glasses on top of it. He gestured, and Bucky clambered into his lap to stare into blue-green eyes so much like his own. The lines and the hollowed cheeks - not so much. “Men who go to war for glory are brutes, son. They just got a funny way of saying so.” 

“So, no.” Bucky had said, tipping his head. 

“No, I didn’t go to war for glory. I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“Was it?” Bucky asks, and his Dad’s face twisted up, eyes glossing. “I don’t think so, but going to war, that’ll teach you to be a man the way I love you too much to ever do.” 

Bucky swallows the memory and all the others, but when he shows up two days after Pearl Harbor with Steve’s vehement voice still echoing in his ear and his heart still hammering. Choices are weighing on him and his heart feels so heavy when he stands on his Mom’s porch and knocks.

The warm glow of home, with all scents and spices and the familiar sounds of little sisters bickering in the back of the house crowd in at once. “James? James, what’s the matter?” He fumbles inside, tripping on the threshold, and opens his mouth but no sounds come out. 

He clears his throat and tries again. “I - war - do you think I should?” And he winces, ‘cause he’s never been so inarticulate in his life. The truth is, Bucky Barnes talks big to the guys and the ladies and hell, even Stevie, but one thing he’s never told anybody is what his father’s eyes looked like; hollowed out versions of his own.

His mom sits him down on the couch and sits down beside him, grasping for his hands until he turns to look at her, memorize the new grey hairs, the lines around her mouth and crows feet at her eyes. She’s not that old, but she’s been through the worst the world could ever offer. He could make it even worse if he goes over across one of the oceans and gets himself killed. He doesn’t want to do that to her.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” she begins, voice warm and cold at once. “Your father went to war a child and came back a man. Thats what he says, and it’s true. But he had to go through hell to get there. It was his rite of passage.” When he looks down she grips his chin in a hard grip and pulls his gaze back to her so he can see her face. So there’s no mistaking her. 

“But when a person goes off to war, they choose it themselves or the country chooses for them.” She says. “We don’t always get to make the big choices for ourselves James. So many are made for us. Just make sure, if you go, you’re going for reasons you think are right enough so they carry you home.” 

Bucky’s always been the type to go into fights and finish them for people he cares about. He doesn’t usually start them, isn’t the type. Steve’s the one to stand up at the first and go to war at the first beck and call, and he can’t. Stevie, hard eyes, hard mouth, rough around the edges but brittle inside. It ain’t right that Bucky can go to war and Steve can’t. That’s what he thinks when he signs up. ‘Cause Steve doesn’t like bullies, and he’ll never be let in or drafted in. But despite all the desperate deliberating and internal monologue, Bucky knew from the start he was going end up joining up. He’s good at finishing things. 

“Proud of you, Buck,” Steve says, hiding the edge of bitter jealousy because Steve’s too good for that sort of thing. Knows Bucky doesn’t need him to be jealous at him, ‘cause they’ve had this fight and they know how it ends already. Once Bucky has the enlistment papers in hand, they don’t really have the time for things like that. Instead, Steve wraps a strong hand around the back of his neck and runs his fingers through his hair, back to front just to mess it up. 

“Punk,” Bucky scowls when Steve hops over the couch and lands next to him. The cushion squeaks, but Steve has the audacity to grin at him. Bucky pokes him in the side so Steve jabs him in the ribs. Then it turns into a faux fighting match that ends in a giggle fit that turns to Steve coughing up half a lung. Bucky brings him water and a warm cloth for it, but they stay up too late talking. 

He waves off Steve’s insistence that he go dancing, or go see his folks. When Steve falls asleep beside him in bed, Bucky puts a hand on his chest and falls asleep to the rhythm of his rise and fall. Steve sleeps with his good ear to the pillow so it muffles the noises he makes. Bucky’s never been more terrified in his life, and he’s not even out there yet. 

In the morning, almost like he’s going to work, Bucky tries to slip out without Steve noticing. This time though, Steve wakes up while he’s getting his boots on and gathering up his duffel, and comes out of the room in time to wrap his arms around Bucky from behind. He stills at the feel of him on his back, of his breath warm against the back of his head, tickling the hairs on his neck. “Don’t win the war without me, jerk.”

“Not a chance.” Bucky says, turning and getting to his feet to give him a proper hug, donning his hat as he pulls away. He winks. “Though it’s hard, Private James Barnes always finishes the fight, Stevie.”

He’s out the door before Steve can reprimand him for calling him Stevie with his laugh stuck in the back of his throat, sticking there like sick.

Basic in Wisconsin, land of the fuckin’ cheese and cows, then deployment to Africa. He doesn’t get a chance to see Steve before he’s on a ship at the very shipyard he’s worked himself to the bone at for so long. With a bunch of guys he hardly knows and the only thing clutched close is a picture of Steve he found in Sarah Rogers’ things. 

Africa is the land of sand and heat and completely miserable. Nights are freezing, days are unbearable, and if the Lieutenant tells him to wear his jacket one more time Bucky’s sure he’s going to actually shoot his head off. You get used to shit like that real fast though. It’s orders and listen and act - everything they taught in basic to keep them alive but worse. 

Somehow though, in the African Campaign, he gets noticed. They’d complimented his ability to make a shot but Bucky, somehow, managed to stay alive. A city boy like him still hanging on. Maybe the Sarg. saw how he sorta’ took care of everyone - it was in his nature. Maybe it was something else. Either way though, despite his mouth, when they’re done and Bucky Barnes goes home, he gets a promotion. He gets weekends off, gets to spend time at home and with Steve, and he doesn’t waste a second of it. 

Sees the future with Steve. It’s good, real good. Rescuing Steve in an alleyway just feels right. Hugging him and feeling those wiry shoulders beneath his - his heart jumpstarts and his pulse roars in his ears and damn it, he can’t do this. But it’s good, all of this. Too good, and he can’t handle the thought of possibly going over again to die. He bids Bonnie and Connie a good night after escorting them each home, then takes the familiar steps two at a time, knocks on Steve’s door. 

“Stevie, I know you’re in there,” he calls, listening to a cat in the alleyway. 

He hears the neighbors arguing, to chatter in the street, and he leans back against the side of the door and knocks again. Takes off his hat with his heart pounding away. He could use the extra key and let himself in but it doesn’t seem right. But Steve could be moping for not getting in again, or down by the docks - anywhere. Maybe he’s got a dame now or somewhere to be. Maybe, just. Maybe this is the universe’s way of saying things are good here and he’s not needed. Bucky Barnes isn’t the kid from Brooklyn anymore. He’s a sergeant and a sniper and a damn good soldier. 

His ma’d said he’d made his dad proud. But Bucky didn’t feel all that proud, standing at Steve’s door in the middle of the night listening to the sounds of a world he couldn’t really be a part of anymore. And sure, this was his apartment too in a way. He put half the rent into it and all. But all the same, it wasn’t - he’d moved his stuff back to his Ma’s just in case something happened over here, so Steve could have more room. It was like a moving out, getting enlisted. 

Bucky doesn’t realize he’s crying until he’s flinching at the wet hot of his tears on his cheeks. “Dammit,” he sniffs, wiping his eyes and replacing his hat. Leaves alone and in shadow. It’s not like he hadn’t said goodbye, but there were words - words stuck so thick in his throat that they were making him sick. 

Nothing for it, though. A good soldier keeps marching. 

\--

He sees the nineteen year old kid in his unit get shot in the head right in front of him in Italy. His brains thumped against the top of Bucky’s helmet and his brain futzes.

“Shit!” Bucky dives to the ground next to his body and covers his own head with his hands. “Motherfucking shit!” 

His name was Lucky, and he came from Idaho, the land of potatoes or some shit. Nobody came from Idaho except this poor, unlucky bastard, and Bucky had his brains splattered on his cap.

He crouches down and feels Lucky up for the grenades attached to his uniform with shaking hands. He lobs them off at the Kraut’s one over the other. Blames back alley baseball with Steve and the other lads when each one hits a mark with a blast. 

His heart’s in his throat and his mouth smells like sandpaper and iron and copper. Fear, they say, does strange things to a man in a warzone. It turns you lifeless or it turns you into a monster or it turns you cold and Bucky’s not sure which one he is. 

“If this is Italy, where’s all the Italians?” He asks Dugan, the big guy with the bowler cap in his unit. 

“Maybe the Germans ate them,” Dugan yells, cigar dangling as he fires his rifle grenade into an open window. They get orders to move just in time, machine gun fire cracks open the wall behind them like an eggshell. 

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky yells, ducking low and diving away. 

The next bit of shelter they get strands them in an open road. The only way out is through a god damned alleyway, and Bucky -- Bucky isn’t a hero and he didn’t read the war books like Steve, he wasn’t into that. 

“Get the fuck down!” He yells, snatching two of the Privates left in his unit down against the wall by Dugan. It’s crowded and the cover is sparse. One of them takes a sniper bullet to the head, and Bucky whips around, marking where the shot came from with a clench of his jaw.

“God damn it,” he says, looking around them, eyes wide under his hat. He pinpoints where the fire’s coming from and reloads his rifle with steady hands. He takes a deep breath, looks Dugan in the eye, and swivels on his heel, rifle already in position and aiming at the kraut behind the far window, sniping guys. James Buchanan Barnes walks right into hellfire and comes out the other side with nothing but a cut cheek, some holes in his clothes from where the bullets whizzed by him, and not a lick of cover fire. Nobody watching his six, just stepped right around the wall and started firing his rifle. 

“Headshots, each one of them,” says Dugan that night when they’re shacked up in a trench in the Italian countryside with the segregated regiment. Bucky digs for his cigarettes and pulls out a partially crushed box, offering it around. Dugan snorts, pulling out his cigars. “Bravest shit I ever saw,” he says with a jaunty grin, offering one to Bucky. There’s a proud gleam in his eye, like he raised Bucky instead of just being a part of his unit. Bucky tries not to scowl about it; he’s not a kid even if his face makes him look young.

“No thank you, Dum Dum, I don’t wanna know where you got those,” Bucky declines with a shake of his head. Rolls his eyes and holding the tip of his cigarette up to the match lit by Private Jones. 

“Why’d you do it?” Jones asks, shaking the light out before it burns his fingers. 

This is the moment most people would talk themselves up, but Bucky frowns, seeing kraut heads snapping back with his bullets when he closes his eyes. He jerks them open with a shake of his head. “Just saw an exit. Had to take it before it closed up, get us out.” He doesn’t say he had a good luck charm, because, well. He did all of that with Lucky’s brains all over him and it just wouldn’t be right. 

He wants to mention it though, and it stays on the tip of his tongue. He fights it back by taking a long drag of his cigarette. His hands don’t shake. And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Bucky’s hands don’t fucking shake. 

\--

“You know,” Dum Dum says a couple nights later while they’re in another shitty trench with rain torrenting down on them in some shelled out field. “They get paid ‘hundred dollars more a month to jump outta those airplanes.”

“Shit,” Bucky laughs, cigarette dangling from his lips as he fishes around in his pockets for a lighter. “You’d have to kill me first.” 

He says this, like that, lights his cigarette, but as he watches shadows of paratroopers coming down from the sky that night from the scope of his rifle, soaked to the bone and trying to keep his ammunition dry, he can’t help but wish he’d known that. Hundred dollars -- it would’ve helped put Steve through art school; woulda’ gotten Becca a good dress so she could get herself a good, smart boy; would’ve paid rent at home -- would’ve done a lot of things with fifty more dollars.

But Bucky Barnes would’ve faced down fifty Nazi’s alone rather than put his life in the hands of a piece of flying metal and a shoot that might not pop open. He’s seen those airplanes light on fire with thirty guys inside, and no fuckin’ thank you. If Bucky Barnes was going to be in the air he was going to do it on top of something solid, something real. Bucky wasn’t a coward, but he wasn’t a fool either. 

Though that was up for debate come a few months later, when the company got ambushed in Northern Italy and snapped up by some goons who could disintegrate a man in one hit. 

\--

“You’re not gonna’ get nothin’ out of me, you fuckin’ Kraut bastard!” 

He spits blood at the Doctor’s face and hits him between his wire framed glasses. Lets out a mad cackle until the guard hits him so hard he can feel something crack. Pain, a warm gush of blood, and he cuts the inside of his cheek on a jagged piece of chipped tooth.

“I’m not German, Sergeant Barnes, I’m Swiss.” Zola corrects calmly, wiping his glasses with a handkerchief embroidered with a symbol of a million snakes. Fucking cute. The details you remember right before you’re ripped apart. Zola looks at him with his beady little eyes, then turns his attention to the assisting guard on the other side, the one who hasn’t hit him yet. “Prepared? Good, drop it.”

It’s not just one needle like the first couple-dozen times he’s been poked and jabbed and injected. No, this time it’s all of them at once, and Doctor Zola’s machine is humming in his ear. Bucky can’t move his head but he can see Zola’s hand pull the lever. Electricity crackles and every cell in his body feels like it’s been torn apart and put back together and he can feel it in his ears, coming out his eyes -- someone’s screaming too loudly, his body’s not his own - he feels blank -- 

Cold water wakes him, tossed over his naked body. Hundreds of pins and needles chucked at him at once narrowed down to this moment of shocking wakefulness and he whimpers. His head jerks back against the brick of the wall, and his fingers scrape the floor. His vision focuses slowly and the guard in the doorway grapples him up by the nape of the neck still dripping, freezing cold. He can see his own flesh not covered in filth for the first time in ages. It’s mottled with big, blotchy bruises instead. He’s manhandled down a dim hallway and into a cell, and chucked on top of his own clothes like a rag doll.

He lays there limply for what seems like hours, feeling himself out, trying to remember what it’s like to feel warm. Pulls on his clothes and curls up. He can hear somebody screaming down the hall, feels his own heart start beating double time. Unlike him, though, this guy stops screaming and doesn’t start again, and he hardly knows a lick of German, but he knows what the Doctor’s shouting when they stop. 

The cell they tossed him in can hardly be called that. It’s like a broom closet with a heavy ass door with the smallest window he’s ever seen; he’d hardly be able to fit his hand through it, and he knows he’s lost weight so that shouldn’t be an issue at all. There’s a slot at the bottom they slide food through everyday, and it’s the same stuff they fed them in the pit before they picked him out of the crowd. 

First he limps around, pacing to make sure his muscles still work the way they ought to - they do, but they cramp and burn at odd intervals, going white hot to frozen at random. His legs are cramping something fierce when they come for him next. He thinks it’s maybe been a week of him in his own head, listening to screaming start then stop. But he can’t be sure, there is no natural sunlight here, and he hasn’t seen the outside since they got captured. Someone wants this operation to be kept underground. 

“So, what made you come out and play with your fancy weapons?” He asks as they strap him in. Guards are wearing goggles and masks so he can’t see their faces, but he can see Zola’s, and he smiles when the Doctor sneers.

“You’ve been a remarkable subject, Sergeant Barnes. Everyone else has failed so far. Only you’ve survived. Care to tell us why?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” Bucky asks, smirking in his face. “You’re the Doctor, aren’t you?” 

“Remarkable,” the doctor says, shining a light in Bucky’s eyes. Bucky flinches back at the touch. He snaps an order in German, and they move to comply.

Bucky takes that as his cue and starts thrashing, ripping his arm out of the strap that’s not tight enough yet. He grabs a scalpel from the table at his left and stabs the guard in the throat. He goes down screaming, clutching his jugular. The other guard is too fast for Bucky, and he twists his wrist so hard it snaps, and then backhands him in the face with a punch that leaves his ears ringing.

“Restrain him!” Zola snaps, and then he grips Bucky by the jaw, jabs him in the neck with a needle and injects him. His body falls limp in half an instant, and his head rolls on his shoulders while they hoist him back up and strap him to the table. 

“What’s that?” He asks, but it comes out as a grunt. He drools on his chin. His eyes can’t focus right. 

“I don’t want to kill you, Sergeant,” the doctor begins. His voice echoes too loud in his head, making it pound. “But you are making it very hard to be patient with you. We were nice, and now we have no choice but to treat you as you wish to be treated.” The doctor’s gloved hand closes over his lower jaw, tilting his head up so his eyes focus on him. “Cattle.” 

\--

He can’t remember when he learned it but at some point in his time of schooling, he’d learned that the human body was made up of mostly water. If that’s true, if that’s true then Bucky’s body feeling like fire and poison just has to mean he’s not really human no more, and that’s about right. He can’t move his fingers but he’s strapped to a table alone with Zola and alarms are going off. He’s saying something - his rank, that’s it, and his name, and his serial number, and that’s about all he has because he’s sure they’ve stripped it all away. 

The long and short of it is -- Bucky’s experienced pain before in his life. Bones break, wrists and ankles sprain, getting knifed -- he’s had pain, he’s caused pain. He has yet to experience the unique pleasure of getting shot but he’s pretty sure that’s just a matter of time coming. But he’s not sure he’s going to survive this, not sure he’s going to be any sort of human left to survive this. 

And from the way his entire body is on fire, that feels pretty right. 

He’s so out of it that it takes what feels like a million years before he realizes that the doctor is gone. But he’s, well, he’s hallucinated that before. He can’t turn his head really well from the way they’ve clamped him to the table, so he can’t be sure. What was he going to do? Escape? 

He thinks of screams that’d got cut short and thinks, so bitterly, that he’s jealous. Some people just get to die screaming, and others die slowly, losing one piece at a time. 

When Steve - the one Sarah Rogers talked about, the one who was built and right and a head taller than him. The one who could breathe without possibly choking on air or having asthma attacks creep up on him. The one who could see all the colors of the spectrum - who could finally look at him and see the color of his eyes. That one, the one who pulled him off the table. The one with warm hands and that same proud face but was so wrong. He couldn’t tug this one to his body and fit his shoulder into the crook of his neck. 

This one, this one wasn’t going to die at thirty but he wasn’t right either, because this was his mind playing tricks on him and letting him see the boy he’d waited for, the boy he’d protected, the boy he’d kissed, and pined for. It was real when he closed his eyes, though, and his hearings been a factoid blessing he hasn’t hallucinated with yet, so that voice was real and thank god. 

He wants to kiss him to make sure, but instead of pulling him in he stumbles and falls against him and croaks out, eyes wide in disbelief: “I thought you were smaller.” 

He can’t believe he can stand, when he stands. 

He can’t believe he runs. He can’t really believe anything that’s happening, because it all seems so wrong and mythical. Schmidt pulls off his face and reveals a red skull and he makes a crack but his heart is sinking, thinking of the fire in his veins. Steve is gorgeous and beautiful and he might not have one of those, but Bucky, Bucky might. 

\--

He wants to say he’s glad that Dugan is there, and Jones, and Morita and the others he’d been shoved into a pen with. But he’s numbed over now and waiting for the water bucket wake up. He’s cold as hell as it is but he keeps sweating buckets and whenever he turns his head he catches people looking at him. 

Sometimes it’s not a person, it’s Zola. 

He wants to check out so bad. God, does he want to. But there’s a handful of Sergeants and even fewer NCOs, and everyone seems to have massed together regardless of rank and unit to follow after Captain America in his spangled outfit. 

But he can’t, because he knows that look. And he knows the guys they’re marching with, the ones Steve’s trying to lead. The ones that want to follow some big Star Spangled idiot the way Bucky follows some idiot kid from Brooklyn. But the troops are hungry, and they’re far from the closest allied camp. They got a lot of walking and everyone’s hurt but free. It should be easy, but there’s a kid breaking down and Steve doesn’t know what to do. Bucky can see that. The mulish lock of Steve’s jaw and the way he sets his shoulders. He’s got an air of pure righteousness about him and Bucky can’t look at him for too long because it does stuff to him.

“Monsters and magic,” Bucky says, breaking through the small ring of the kid’s unit -- more like the group of guys who’d been locked up with him -- and crouching down next to him. “We didn’t sign up for this.” He quirks an eye at him and the kid looks at him. It’s not right for him to call him that, a kid. But he looks like he’s probably seventeen, so Bucky can call him what he likes, thanks. 

He puts a hand on his shoulder, because he has no choice. His skin creeps at the touch and he fights the instinct to clamp down and fight the small crowd. “C’mon, here.” He gives him his canteen. “Get up and keep moving, alright? You’re in the army boy, we march.” 

It’s not inspirational, but it’s simple. He gets up and nods at Steve. “You heard the Captain, boys!” Dugan’s voice has all the power in the world. It helps he’s got a fuckin’ Hydra tank to yell on top of. Bucky’s lip quirks when everyone falls into formation and starts marching on. 

Destroying the hydra base must have distracted the enemy, because they get to the base where they’re going unscathed. Bucky’s done his best to keep up with the hike and somehow managed it the entire time. His insides feel like breaking apart but he stands there with his stupid gun and his feet bleeding. He didn’t sleep the whole march and now he feels strung out and exhausted. It’s cold and rainy and he knows the promise of a hot meal shouldn’t turn his stomach the way it is.

The first thing he does is take a shower. It’s lukewarm at best but it’s a shower. He scrubs until his skin is raw. He shaves, runs his fingers through his hair. He stares at the face of the man in the mirror and tries to remember the boy who volunteered for war because he thought it would teach him who he was. 

“This is who you are,” he tells it, and gives a half-hearted smirk. It’s dead and hollowed out and looks so wrong on his face. He scratches a half-healed sore on his neck. He leaves the showers to grab the clothes he’d been given to change into (not even the army wants his old uniform back), but stops in the doorway when he sees a hunched Steve sitting at the bench.

He thought somehow, that Steve wouldn’t notice how Bucky’s been trying to avoid him. He’d hoped that maybe he could get away with it somehow. He figured it’d be easy with the way he’d been looking at Agent Carter and how he probably had a dozen reports to write. 

“Jesus, Stevie,” Bucky starts with a shaky laugh. He crosses to where he’d left the folded pile of a new uniform and drops the towel. He’d be more ashamed but it’s Steve, and they’ve seen all of each other more times than he can count. Anyway, the only reason he’s allowed to pick who he’s naked in front of now is Steve, and he doesn’t really know how to quantify that. “Can’t a guy get a moment to himself?” 

Steve quirks an eyebrow at him, that half smile so familiar. “You’re in the army, Buck. Not an option.” 

Bucky dresses efficiently while Steve stares at the wall beside him, nails of one hand digging into the palm of the other. Bucky drops onto the bench beside him to put on socks (clean fucking socks, thank heaven above and hell below) and stuff his feet into his boots. 

“Something to say, Rogers?” He asks, when it becomes clear that Steve’s not going to talk first. That this was as far as he could get himself before he stalled out.

Steve sucks in a breath and Bucky watches the physical manifestation of him preparing for a fight. “Do you remember after Mom died, and you took me to the bar and we got roaring drunk?” He’s looking at his hands. Bucky stills from where he’s lacing up his boots. His heart stutters and stalls out. He thinks, God, yes. Let me kiss you. Let me make sure you’re real. Let me make sure all of this isn’t some big, crazy Nazi hallucination. 

“No,” he says, licking his lips. He quirks his lips. It’s just a flash before it’s gone. He hears himself saying words. “I gotta tell you, I got blackout drunk that night. I don’t remember much past midnight.”

“Oh,” Steve says. He looks relieved. Or maybe he just looks confused. Bucky’s pulse is racing too much to find out. 

He finishes with his laces and stands up, draping his dog tags over his neck. “Is that all, Stevie? I’m starving.” 

\--

He doesn’t eat.

He doesn’t sleep well. 

His medical check somehow turns out fine. They take his blood and he freezes up. He sort of blacked out at that bit, but Steve put off his reports to stay with him for it. The funny thing is, Bucky felt like he was practically vibrating out of his skin when they pulled the needle out, but Steve said he didn’t move a damned muscle. Small miracles all around.

By the time they get to London Bucky practically falls into the bar. He somehow managed to dress himself into his regulation uniform, though he lost his cap somewhere. He holes himself up in a corner of the bar and thinks about how he could be going home. He can’t remember home. He closes his eyes and tries all he might but all he sees is Zola or needles or the Hydra symbol. He’s fucked up and he should be in the medical ward -- the one where they don’t always come out. He deserves to suffocate with a pillow to the face for being on the wrong side of crazy and he’s still sure his veins are filled with more fire than blood. 

Whatever it is, he has to keep drinking to keep a buzz, and that’s about all he’s getting to. The guys at the table are hollering and yodelling and having a grand time and he’s just trying to put away enough alcohol to stay buzzed enough to not care about how much grit there is behind his eyelids. 

But he can’t see his Ma or his sisters or Brooklyn when he closes his eyes. Really, home’s a Rogers for him, and has been a while. He loves his family so much, but he can’t even see one of them. So of course he’s got to say yes, of course he’s following that stupid kid from Brooklyn. He’ll even embarrass himself in front of him a little bit. Makes it easier, right? Helps to remember that he’s falling apart and just a sliver of who he was before. 

\--

He thinks he’ll be able to stand Steve falling so hard for Carter. It’s one of those half formed thoughts that had plagued him at some point, but just like all of them, he can’t finish it and it just comes back to plague him instead. It’s like he’s torturing himself because the job wasn’t done and he never stopped screaming. 

The worst thing about everything is that Steve has fucking paparazzi. They show up every once in a while and Bucky has to put away his lucky strikes and paste a smile on his face. He manages it for the folks back home. He’s Steve’s dark shadow and someone’s trying to make the war some sort of publicity stunt for the pictures. A world ago he’d have been excited for the voice overs. In the pictures, Ma! He could have yelled. But the only thing he really gets a smile over anymore is Steve and he’s not fooling anybody about it. 

“What the fuck is this?” Bucky asks over the new uniforms. He’s thrown, ‘cause what’s the point of the different styles? What’s the fuckin’ point except painting targets on all of them. If he wanted the Nazi’s to tell which one was Bucky Barnes, sniper, so they could shoot him first, he would have said. 

“At least they didn’t send tights,” Steve says, with a quirk of a smirk. Bucky throws on the blue jacket that looks like it ought to come from the Civil War. He really can’t complain too hard, because it’s cold, it’s winter, and his old jacket is ratty and terrible now. This one’s well made and looks like someone actually put some money into it. 

“Aw, our Bucky wouldn’t look half bad in tights,” Dugan smirks, unpacking his own box with an eyebrow raised as he does so. 

“He is a good dancer,” Steve says wistfully, and Bucky socks him lightly in the arm. 

“Damn right I am, you oughta try it, Stevie. Miss Carter’s waiting for you.” He grins at him and Steve flushes crimson. The light hearted air carries on while the film crew is there until they have to move out. 

\--

Bucky finally gets shot in the leg in Bastogne. 

It hurts more than he thought it would but less than the fiery hell of the drugs they pumped him full of. Someone is yelling for a medic and wheels and Bucky clings to Morita’s arm with wide, fear blown eyes. “Don’t you send me away,” he hisses as Dernier holds him down so they can bind the wound with a scrap of Bucky’s spare uniform. 

“Alright, Sarg. You got it.” Jim says, soothing. Steve helps hold him down when he pulls the bullet out of his leg right there in his frozen trench. Bucky bites down on his jacket sleeve and stares up at the snow falling so peacefully, at the stars that dazzle brighter than lights across the riverbank back home. Morita sterilizes his tools with fire and it burns when he pulls the bullet out, when he stitches him up. But Bucky stays with them, with Steve, with home. In their little trench. The next day he snipes a Nazi in the head and flashes back to Lucky.

Bucky shakes and blames the cold. 

\--

“You ever wonder what nature would tell us if it could talk?” Jones asks while they’re riding in the back of a truck to capture Zola. 

“Don’t gotta wonder,” Bucky says, lighting a cigarette and offering his pack around absently. He looks up past them to the view. It could be gorgeous, if he wasn’t so worried about what was hiding in every shadow. The light is just right so the sun shines off the snow-topped mountains. The pines are thick and rich with green. He glances at Steve, who’s looking at them with new wonder. Green is new for him, the shock of it always lights up Steve’s face whenever he gets a chance to see the color. Like he’s seeing a Naturalist's’ painting up close. He can tell his fingers are aching for his paints. 

It makes his heart ache, wishing he would look at him like that. 

“It’d be saying, go the fuck home and reproduce you freakin’ mammals.” He lays into the thickest parts of his accent to get a couple chuckles. “Soak up the sun, bang out some kids, stop pollutin’ our oxygen with yer damn smog.” 

The thing is, Bucky wants to put a bullet through Zola’s temple when they meet. That’s all he can think about past Coney Island and dropping down a zipline. Maybe that’s his defining characteristic. He wouldn’t be able to keep Zola alive to interrogate him because he’d have dropped him where he stood. Shooting a gun is the easiest thing in the world. The hard part is where the bullet goes. You tell yourself you’re doing good, killing Nazi’s and people who’ve been forcefed a load of crap. Bucky tells himself none of these things, because he’s a piece of shit but he’s going to be honest with himself. 

Bucky would drop Zola because he’s terrified of him, of what he can do. Zola is a target and he wants to put a bullet in him before he shits on somebody else. Whatever Schmidt’s planning? Bucky would let it all happen to get one shot at Zola. Because Bucky never misses. 

He’s a hunter, and Zola; his target. So, maybe it’s just somebody’s way of telling him he can finally be done. He screams when he falls.

Screams, and screams, and screams. Until he stops. 

\--

He used to think dying would be freeing, somehow. Because even when you’re six feet under or when there’s nothing left to bury but a metal necklace and a duffel bag that smells like someone poured gunpowder down the sewer, at least you’re done. You found a resolution. Your life was bookended by two acts: Being born and dying. There’s usually a whole lot of suffering in between. 

But when you die, you’re supposed to stay dead. 

\--

Someone shoulda’ put a bullet between Zola’s eyes when they had the chance. 

\--

Here’s a bookending. Except this is more of a continuation, honestly. The asset -- Bucky. James. Barnes. American. Codename: Winter Soldier; whatever the name of the decade, all of them together, have existed to make up him, standing in front of Steve’s apartment complex and buzzing the doorbell. Dingdong ditch is probably a bit above his age, at ninety-eight and counting, but who’s keeping track of that? 

The thing is, he doesn’t remember everything. And probably won’t remember everything. But he’s functional, despite the arm fritzing out on him like a heavy weight and the bones replaced within his body to keep him from cracking apart. He’s in constant pain but that’s not so high on his list of things to give a rats ass about. 

He’s standing on Steve’s doorstep and it’s raining. His hair is long enough for him to tie it up into a loose ponytail, he’s exhausted and has moments of utter confusion, but he’s here, waiting for Steve to open the door (please open the door) and then it clicks and beeps and he clatters up the steps. 

He freezes halfway to the landing he knows Steve lives on because of course he watched him. He’s got those blazing blues and is dressed like an old man (like he could talk), but there he is, two steps above him and whole. 

“Bucky?” Steve asks, hesitant, hopeful, visibly holding himself back from slamming into him in a hug because he’s also wary. The last time he saw him he’d put three bullets in him and all but killed him. So, yeah. Wary. But not wary enough. Bucky knows at least seven ways to kill a person on the stairs, even someone like Steve. 

“Your mom.” He blurts when he opens his mouth, and blinks in confusion because he didn’t want to say that at all. He continues doggedly, anyway. “She said, if you hadn’t been so sick, you woulda’ been the height you are now.” 

Steve’s brow furrows and he opens his mouth to speak, but Bucky holds up a hand. “Your mom always saw you for who you really were. I only saw you as this little punk from Brooklyn. I only followed him.” He swallows and squares his shoulders in a way that hurts. “I think. I lied when I said I didn’t remember the night we went out after she died, you know.” 

“Oh,” Steve says, then sucks in a breath. “Oh.” 

Steve wraps around him, aided by the stairs and pressing his chin into his hair. His lips press against his temple and he smells like a shock of sense memory. Somehow different and yet, so similar. The only god damned thing in this world that smells like home and it’s always been him, how messed up is that? 

The thing is, Bucky’s only got pieces of himself left. They all broke apart after he’d figured himself out, but he’d been too chickenshit to really deal with them. Bucky doesn’t have a whole lot left, but honestly, he could die again tomorrow. He’s not willing to take the chance to not take the shots he’s got these days. He has so, so much to make up for but this, here, this is what he wants. 

This, his dad’s voice practically echoes in his head as he pulls Steve as close as he can without knocking them both down the stairs. This was his to protect.

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a relatively small, simple character exploration story about why Bucky chose to go to war and, because these characters can't do simple, kind of exploded all over.


End file.
